


Feathers for Pillows

by whatsanapocalae



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Compilation, Cute, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Neurological Disorders, Touch-Starved, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-12 10:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17466086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: A compilation of The Evil Within one shots (primarily Steseb) focusing on fluff and hurt/comfort. Tags will update with chapters and prompts are accepted but not guaranteed to be finished. Assume that Stefano, Sebastian, and Juli are trans unless otherwise stated.chapter 1: Stefano is touch starved, Sebastian didn't realize that he is too.





	Feathers for Pillows

**Author's Note:**

> Stefano's leg issues was inspired in part by Angelicsociopath!

Stefano had shaky legs and while he could move silently through the house, much to both Sebastian and Lily’s chagrin, it was just as often that he would be stumbling and bumbling, leaning against walls and gripping railings. He had a cane, but he hated it, and he only ever used it when they were out. Sebastian thought it looked dignified, Stefano though it made him look old and broken. 

He was coming down the stairs, skipping the loudest of them, because he hated to make them creak, but they could still hear him coming. Lily responded first, eyes wide as she darted out of the kitchen and towards the stairs, though Sebastian was right behind her. The heavy step turned into a series of bumps as Stefano’s heel hit the stairs on each one, sliding down it. 

Lily stopped, just looking at him and, while his positioning was humorous, there was nothing funny in the way that he was gripping the hand rail, how pale and shaky he was, or has his eyes darted over them from where he lay a few steps up from the bottom of the stairs. 

Sebastian darted past her, grabbing Stefano by his free arm and pulling him to his feet. Or he would have if Stefano hadn’t jumped away like Sebastian’s very touch was fire and did look up at him with something akin to terror. Sebastian let him go, taking a few steps back, and watched as Stefano got himself back up to his feet. 

“Are you alright?” Sebastian asked, looking him over. 

Stefano looked himself over as well. “Nothing’s broken, though I think my ego might be bruised.”

“Is that even possible?” Lily joked. It wasn’t funny. 

Stefano ran his hands, also shaky, down his pant legs, wiping off whatever dirt there may have been on the floor. “I believe the show is over now though, unfortunately, so if we can all stop crowding the stairs that would be splendid.”

Sebastian and Lily both took a step back but they didn’t go back to the kitchen until Stefano was leading the way, his limp almost exaggerated. He glared at them both as he went to the coffee maker, pouring himself a cup of Sebastian’s bitter crud, the kind that he always complained about. 

“I thought I said the show was over,” He would have growled it if it weren’t for Lily being there, he always softened his voice around her. 

“We want to make sure you’re okay,” Lily said, sitting at the table once more. 

“Well I am, like I said,” Stefano sat across from her. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

Sebastian put his hand on the table, next to him. “Physically yeah, but, shit-

“Dad!” Lily interrupted, her eyes almost completely round, “Swearing!”

Sebastian rolled his eyes but his words were soft, “Sorry, baby. Stefano, I tried to help you up and you flinched, are you okay?”

Stefano lowered his head, let his hair hide his face further. “It’s fine. No one’s meant to touch me.”

They sat in silence for a while after that and Sebastian drank his own coffee and got Lily ready for school and himself ready for work. Stefano drank his own cup, slowly, staring at his hands all the while. They didn’t push him, didn’t ask, even though Sebastian was thinking about it all the while. He thought about it when he got Lily to the bus stop and held her hand until it arrived, he thought about it on his way to work, while he suffered through being a meter cop, and on the drive home. 

After STEM, after the hospital, after getting Stefano home, he’d barely ever touched him. Most of it was for his physical therapy, touches that had to happen, but it was always Stefano who had woken him up in the night with a light touch, having come from his own room to settle Sebastian’s nightmares; it was always Stefano who gripped onto him when he would have tripped otherwise; it was always Stefano who trailed his fingers down the side of Sebastian’s face, where a scar had never had a chance to grow, as he apologized for some ill that had or hadn’t happened in the real world or somewhere else. 

Lily didn’t touch him either. 

He pulled up to the house, locked his car, and made his way inside. He didn’t bother being quiet. He liked it when people knew where he was. The first floor had been swept and vacuumed and as he made his way into the kitchen he found that the dishes had all been done and the garbage taken out as well. The garbage was one of Lily’s jobs. He went up the stairs and found that the laundry had been sorted into piles, though it wasn’t folded. Stefano was terrible at finishing the laundry, but he’d tried, and Sebastian wondered if he was trying to make up for something. 

The door to his room was closed and he knocked on it. “Stefano? I’m home.”

It took a moment and there was a light thumping, but Stefano came to the door and opened it, “Was I meant to meet you at the door?” he asked, his tone a combination of concern and annoyance. 

“No,” Sebastian assured him, giving him a light smile and knowing that it failed. “I just wanted to talk about something. Are you busy?”

Stefano backed into the room, letting Sebastian in. He was using his cane, even in here, in where he was supposed to be safest. There was a notebook and a computer open on his desk, and all of his camera and film and chemicals were all stored in their bins to the side. 

“Just applying to jobs,” Stefano waved at the computer, sitting down in front of it. There was only the one chair in here, Sebastian would either have to stand or sit on the bed. He chose the latter. “Amazing how difficult it can be when you don’t have any recent work history or a visa or even exist.”

“There’s no rush,” Sebastian promised for the millionth time. 

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Stefano sighed, “I need to pay you back somehow and I doubt you’re making enough for the three of us.”

And once he had a job he could leave, he could get his own place. That had always been the plan. Sebastian hated the plan. 

“What happened this morning?” Sebastian changed the subject abruptly. 

“I fell, I do that, you know that.” Stefano shrugged. 

“No, not that. I mean, what you said, how people aren’t meant to touch you?”

Stefano turned back to the computer, scrolling through menial labor. “It’s nothing, you should forget I said anything.”

“It’s all I could think about today.”

“Then I apologize for distracting you.”

Sebastian just sat there, feeling defeated, feeling himself get frustrated. This was something that he could do, this was talking, but Stefano wasn’t letting him in. He never wanted to let Sebastian in. He had to be stoic and strong all the time. 

“Goddamn it, you don’t have to be strong all the time! Just tell me what’s going on.”

Stefano’s head snapped around, his hair sliding away from his face for a moment and he looked so small there, so far away and Sebastian had barely raised his voice but he could see Stefano try to figure it out, try to understand his anger, try to figure out if it as directed at him or not. 

“I’m sorry,” his hands went to his lap and his shoulders slumped. “I’m not good at this. There are many things I’m not good at. I don’t know what you want to hear.”

Sebastian stood up and Stefano was even smaller. He got close, knelt down beside him, rested a hand on the back of the chair. “I just want to hear what you have to say. I need you to be open with me, to tell me what you need.”

“What if I don’t know what I need?”

“Then we’ll figure that out too.”

Stefano looked at him and there was need there there was desire and desperation. He opened his mouth and closed it again, not know what to say, what to get out. 

He tried again. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember when the last time was that someone touched me who didn’t want me hurt or was a doctor. You touched me in Union, but only with a gun in your hand, and Theodore touched me with flames and all of those tools he needed to make me what he wanted. This morning, you grabbed me and I thought you were going to hurt me again but the touch felt…”

Sebastian wanted to brush the hair away from his face. He wanted to touch him, he wanted to wipe the tears from his eyes but he wasn’t crying. He was saying all of this as a matter of fact, no emotion behind the words. He only stopped in order to contemplate what he’d be saying next. 

“You know when you drink a glass of water in the middle of the night and you can feel how cold it is inside of you? It felt like that. And like electricity at the same time. I don’t know if I liked it.”

“And if I touched you now?” Sebastian raised his hand, almost cupping Stefano’s cheek, just barely any air between them. 

“I don’t know.”

“May I?”

Stefano exhaled a long shaky breath, closing his eye. He didn’t say anything but Sebastian held there, didn’t move, until he saw Stefano nodded, small and trembling, worried about what the touch would mean. 

He closed the distance. At first they both held their breaths, just waiting, Sebastian’s eyes traveling over Stefano’s face, trying to recognize each small expression before it changed into another. 

“More?” it came out as a whisper but Sebastian took him by the elbow, helping him out of the chair and over to the bed, never breaking contact. Stefano’s eye was open, was on him, more than it was on the floor and when he was set down he didn’t fight it, he let Sebastian position him. 

“Let me know if it’s too much,” Sebastian instructed, tugging gently on his elbow to get him to lie down. 

“What are you going to do?” 

Sebastian’s hand left his elbow to go to his stomach, pulling up his shirt to lay his hand against him, fingers splayed. “I’m going to touch you, that’s all.”

Stefano shuddered as the hand trailed up, the other still on his face, thumb rubbing circles against his cheek. He went up towards Stefano’s heart, finding it pounding, and his thumb went to Stefano’s lips to feel how sharply he was breathing. 

“Are you okay?”

Stefano nodded, “I just. I didn’t realize it was so important. That I needed this. It’s intense, in a way.”

Sebastian lay down behind him, pressing close. “I’m sorry,” he nuzzled in close and he could smell Stefano and he smelled so much different than the last time, less like chemicals and medicine and hospitals. He smelled like shampoo and sweat and coffee. “I should have done this sooner.”

Stefano pressed closer, pinned Sebastian’s hand between their bodies. He felt like a bundle of exposed nerves. He felt like he was heavy, physical, more so than ever before. His body seared against Sebastian’s and he’d had touch, had Lily, but it was so different from this. He hadn’t realized that he was starved too. 

“I never said.”

Sebastian dragged his arm down along Stefano’s side, pushing it between him and the mattress to run his hands up and down Stefano’s back. It was almost sexual, to be this close, to feel his anxiety thrumming under his skin, to touch all of his skin, but it was better, like waves crashing on his flesh, like static clinging to his fingertips. Stefano was slow to touch him back, to copy the way that his hands moved, and then he felt like there was lightning being pressed into his spine and he shivered. 

“This is nice.”

Stefano buried his face into Sebastian’s neck. “Is this what it’s like? To be real?”

Sebastian threw a leg over his hip, just to get closer, just for more contact. “You’re real. This is real. Don’t worry.”

And Stefano kissed him, just a small little thing, a brush of the lips, and Sebastian would have thought it accidental if he didn’t press his face back into the crook of Sebastian’s neck. Sebastian felt a smile on his own face as he curled close, as he massaged the soft flesh on Stefano’s waist in one hand. 

They must have fallen asleep like that because the next moment that Sebastian was aware of was a key in the door and then Lily’s voice from downstairs, calling out that she was home as she threw her backpack against the hallway wall. Sebastian stirred, pulling himself up and off of the bed, out from under Stefano, his arm completely numb. 

Stefano looked at him blearily, his hair fallen away from his face completely. 

“I’ll be right back,” he promised. 

Stefano blinked as Sebastian hid the damaged part of his face with his hair for him. He hadn’t even noticed but the tension returned when he realized what Sebastian was doing. 

“It doesn’t bother me.” Sebastian smiled. 

“I should get up too. I’ll meet you downstairs.” Stefano sat up, burying his face in his hands to try to wipe away their nap. 

Sebastian put a hand on his arm, not wanting to let go of him quite yet. “Take your time.”

He left him there, stretching, and made his way down the stairs. Lily smiled when she saw him, running up and giving him a hug as he instinctually went to his knees for her. 

“I have so much math homework, it’s awful! And Riley was picking on me again but Ms. Traynor sent him to the principals office so maybe that will get him to stop. And I got an A- on my science project! And Theresa fell down and got a scrape on her arm and she had to go to the nurse and she got a bunch of mud o her face and in her hair. And! And this one’s important, but Career Day is next week and you need to come and talk about being a detective.”

“I’m not a detective anymore, Lily,” Sebastian smiled, “I’m just a beat cop now, but I’m working on it. I’d love to come.”

“I’m sure no one would mind if you’re not a real detective anymore,” she kissed his forehead. “How’s Stefano doing?”  
Sebastian sighed and looked up the stairs. He wasn’t coming down quite yet. “He’s okay. Turns out he was just sad because no one gives him enough hugs.”

Lily got very serious then. “Well, we’re just going to have to hug him a lot then, won’t we?”

“Would you be okay with that?” he could see Stefano’s bare feet on the steps, along with his cane. He wondered how much Stefano had heard of their new scheming. 

“I think I could handle it,” Lily grinned, mischievously. She let go of Sebastian and darted up the stairs, almost bowling Stefano over as she grabbed his legs. Sebastian followed her up the stairs, chuckling softly. Stefano looked overwhelmed. 

“It’s a hug, don’t worry, it won’t hurt,” he mused. 

Stefano was slow and odd as he wrapped his arms around Lily in return, looking up at Sebastian as if he needed more instructions. A few months ago he frightened her as much as the nightmares had. Now they were coming back together. 

Sebastian wrapped his arms around Stefano as well, a pair around his waist and a pair around his shoulders. He felt Stefano lay his head down on Sebastian’s shoulder. 

“Thank you for this,” he murmured. 

“Any time,” Sebastian promised, pressing a kiss to his temple. “This is your home now too.”


End file.
